A Guide to Link Google Optimize & Analytics

Updated: Aug 28, 2019

Optimize suggests that to form the most effective doable use of one thing. Google Optimize has emerged as a robust platform for A/B testing. Google Optimize is Google’s new web site testing and experimentation platform. For most users, it will enable quick and easy testing of page design and content changes. Optimize experiments are measured by Google Analytics and the products must be linked to unlock the full functionality of Optimize.

Linking an Optimize Container to a Google Analytics Property

For this, you require: -

A Google Analytics Account and Property.

An Optimize Account and Container.

Appropriate Permissions.

A Google Analytics Account and Property:

To start collecting basic data from a website:-

Create or sign in to your Analytics account.

Set up a Property in your Analytics account: - A property represents your website or app and is the collection point in Analytics for the data from your site or app.

Set up a reporting view in your property: - Views let you create filtered perspectives of your data.

Add the tracking code to your website so you can collect data in your Analytics Property.

An Optimize Account and Container: Your Optimize account allows you to run experiments on one or more websites. Although you can setup multiple Optimize accounts from one Google account, you will typically only need one Optimize account per company or organization. The best follow is to use your company name as your account name and to setup one account per company.

A container holds all of the Optimize configurations for your web site experiences. An Optimize account must have at least one container and you should setup one container for each Analytics property with the domain name as the container name field.

There are two types of Optimize Containers: -

Stored Containers: These include all draft, ended and archived experiences created in a given container and contribute to its overall size. These are not compressed. Delete some of its drafts, ended or archived experiments to reduce the size of a stored container.

Served Containers: These include the running experience and the data is compressed. End some of its experiences to reduce the size of a served container.

Appropriate Permissions:

The minimum Permissions required to link an Optimize Container to an Analytics Property are: -

Publish permission to the Optimize Container.

Edit Permission to the Analytics Property. If you don’t have Edit Permissions to the Analytics Property, it will not show as an available property for linking.

Linking to an Analytics Property

To link your Optimize container to an Analytics Property: -

Navigate to your Optimize Accounts page.

Select a container.

Click LINK PROPERTY in the Container information panel.

Select a Google Analytics Property from the dropdown list that corresponds to the web domain where you will be running experiments. Properties that you don’t have Edit Permission to and Properties that are linked to a different Google Marketing Platform Organization will appear greyed out.

Select one or more Analytics views, including at least one with few or no filters. Every Optimize experiment sends data to one Analytics view and it'll use that view’s goals/metrics for its experiment objectives. The view(s) chosen here will be accessible once you set up your experiments in Optimize.

Click LINK.

Benefits of Linking

When you link Optimize and Analytics: -

• Optimize can calculate experiment results based on the traffic in the view.

• Linking an Optimize Container to an Analytics Property requires Publish Permission to the Optimize Container and Edit Permission to the Analytics Property.

• The Optimize and Analytics accounts must be linked and verified to the same organization in Google Marketing Platform Home before you can link an Optimize Container to an Analytics Property in Optimize. These cannot be linked together in the Optimize interface if they are linked to different organizations in Google Marketing Platform.

Unlinking a Property

If you unlink a property from an Optimize container, past experiment reporting data will be removed from Optimize, but will still be available in Analytics. If you re-link to the exact same property and view(s), the data will again be available in Optimize. If you re-link the same property to the container but do not select the same views, experiment data will not be reported in Optimize but will still be available in Analytics.